


Scheming On a Thing That's Sabotage

by Gnomeskillet



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Gen, Swearing, Violence, because junkrat does that, but it is kinda gay, junkrat is a terrible terrible boy, this is not a romantic fic, what do you call a person who is racist against robots?, zenyatta taking butt and kicking names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 20:54:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16183001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gnomeskillet/pseuds/Gnomeskillet
Summary: While on a mission, Junkrat attempts to make it look like Zenyatta had "an accident." It doesn't work out very well. For Junkrat.





	Scheming On a Thing That's Sabotage

Well, wasn’t this a fair suck of the sav? He, Junkrat! had been shooed on ahead with the coin-operated buddha to capture the objective while the rest of the team kept Talon busy. Didn’t they know area denial was his specialty? He was an explosives expert, a demolitionist, not some bubbly-headed bimbo with a pair of zippy laser guns. What did they expect him to do? PROTECT the fucking rustbucket?

Actually, that was probably exactly what they expected him to do, now that he about it. Poor decision making on their part, he’d be just as happy to see the robot scraped as he would be to see the mission successful. Granted, if he could somehow finagle the operation so he could have his dead robot and eat it too, well, wouldn’t that just be beauty?

Junkrat quickly glanced behind him. In the distance, he could hear Reinhardt shouting, boisterously laughing and gloating as he engaged in combat. Caught in a melee with a bunch of Talon agents, and from the sound of things, he was so absorbed in swinging his hammer that he wouldn’t be leaving the skirmish any time soon. The sound of Tracer’s zippy guns going off and the occasional “whee!” meant that she too was happily tied up in all that nonsense. Ana wasn’t likely to leave Reinhardt’s side, and as for Genji, well, who the fuck knew where the ninja disappeared to?

Better question: who cared? Haha! Probably scouting on ahead and pulling some cirque du soleil bullshit who knows where. Certainly wasn’t anywhere near here, what with all the Talon agents patrolling the factory scaffolding. They were kind of in the way of the objective, but at least they were doing a good job of keeping Zenyatta distracted; the trusting bolt for brains had his back to Junkrat as he peered around the corner, attentively observing the Talon agents for an opening to attack.

It was the perfect set-up for an unfortunate mishap, if Junkrat said so himself, and if he had to be the one to mis the hap, well… it wasn’t like he was going to pass up the opportunity to ditch the scrap, now was he? With a dark grin, Junkrat leaned against the wall, balancing himself on his peg. 

“Oi, tin can!” Just as Zenyatta lifted his head to look back at him, Junkrat put his boot between Zenyatta’s shoulders, kicking him out from cover into the middle of the room. “Be a peach and distract the wankers for me, would ya?”

Junkrat didn’t even get to finish speaking before bullets started pinging off Zenyatta’s magnetic shielding, bringing it down until the Omnic dropped with a staticy gasp of pain.

“Whoopsiedoodle!” Junkrat giggled to himself, covering his grin with the tips of his fingers, glancing around quickly. No one saw him do that, right? There was no angry Japanese shouting, and the sounds of a skirmish was still ringing behind him, so he considered it a good deed gone unpunished. One less uppity Omnic in the world was never a bad thing. And if anyone asked, well, it wasn’t  _ his _ fault that Zenyatta tried to make a move without any kind of reinforcements, now was it?

The sound of metal grinding on the ground caught Junkrat’s attention, and he looked down to see Zenyatta roll onto his side, his hands cupped together. Purple energy crackled between Zenyatta’s palms, and Junkrat felt his stomach plummet.

Shit. Shit shit fuck mother _ fucker  _ goddamn it, he was dead. Junkrat was dead, cuz Zenyatta obviously wasn’t. Zenyatta had managed to survive his bullshit attempt at sabotage, and now Junkrat was dead. Sure, Zenyatta might not kill him, but when everyone else found out what he tried to do, they’d truss Junkrat up by the peg and leave him to hang. Hell, he might even been treated to his very own firing squad!

“Z-zen!” he stammered, taking half a step back, his head tilted back nervously.

“If a distraction is what you need,” Zenyatta grit out, his voice low and tinged with static. “Then that is what I shall provide.”

He rose into the air with one fluid motion, pushing himself up and spinning in place like a dancer. As he turned to face the Talon agents, his hands flew out, a purple orb shooting through the air like a cannonball. One of the beads of his mala followed right behind it, catching the agent in the head hard enough to slam it into the wall. Blood, brains, and fragments of skull splattered against the wall like a melon hitting the pavement from three stories high.

Holy SHIT. For a moment that felt it lasted like forever, Junkrat and the remaining Talon agents stood there, staring at the body. Then the corpse slid down into a heap, leaving a muddy red streak down the wall, missing a good chunk of the head. Like the whole head above the jaw kind of good chunk.

He wouldn’t be the first to admit it, but Junkrat was a little bit turned on. 

Then someone shouted “DAVE!” and the Talon agents rounded on Zenyatta, bullets flying wildly.

This time, Zenyatta was ready for them.

“Hold this for me.” He tossed a golden orb at Junkrat, who fumbled to catch it, but even as it slipped through his fingers, Junkrat felt a lurch, like the world had been ripped out from under him. It was quickly replaced by a feeling of warmth as the orb settled and floated up over his shoulder.

When Junkrat looked up again, he caught sight of Zenyatta ducking and weaving across the factory floor, his arms sweeping through the air like a conductor before an orchestra. He glowed faintly gold as the heavy metal balls of his mala darted from one agent to another, the purple orb darting just ahead of them as bodies fell and Zenyatta shifted his focus.

It was… It was beautiful. Pure poetry in motion, if Junkrat said so himself, and you could quote him on that one. The chaos Zenyatta was causing nearly brought a tear to Junkrat’s eye. The only way the scene could possibly be improved was with a few explosions, something Junkrat could happily provide.

“Oy, scrap heap, I got somethin’ for ya!” he shouted, grabbing a spare rack of grenades and lobbing them at Zenyatta. The Omnic executed a perfect pirouette as the rack flew at him, reaching one arm out and gesturing the bombs to him. One by one, the grenades slipped out of the canister and fell into orbit around Zenyatta, floating around him as easily as his mala beads. Only one grenade failed to join its companions, instead bouncing to the feet of a group Talon agents as if guided there, sending them scattering in all directions as it exploded.

Just… absolutely gorgeous. Stunning, really. Junkrat would be swooning if he had the time for it.

“I believe I have their full attention,” Zenyatta said, sweeping one arm around to direct the purple orb towards the largest agent of the group, one mala ball catching him in the knee, and another three pummeling him in the stomach hard enough that surely he felt it in his kidneys. “This would be the most opportune time to secure the objective.”

“Right, the objective!” Junkrat had almost forgotten about it in the wake of all the mayhem Zenyatta was causing. Their mission today was to extract all the information they could from a Talon database, then wipe the harddrive. If their intel was correct, then the servers in question should be right through the door along the catwalks at the other end of the room.

Flashing a thumbs up at Zenyatta, Junkrat dropped a concussion mine, blowing himself a shortcut up to the catwalks. Unfortunately, the explosion fell just short enough that he caught the edge of the scaffolding with his stomach, temporarily knocking the wind out of him. For a moment, he simply hung there, clutching at the platform and trying to catch his breath, then he scrambled the rest of the way up, wincing at the soreness of his stomach. He was going to have a right proper bruise there later, most likely.

Oh-ho-ho-hor NOT, because as soon as he got himself up properly, Junkrat looked up to find himself looking down the barrel of a loaded gun. Grinning sheepishly and ducking his head, Junkrat settled on his knees, hands slowly above his head. With a roll of his eyes, the Talon good cocked the gun while Junkrat cringed, entirely expecting to be shot. He tensed as the barrel of the pistol brushed over his forehead, but when the gun went off, the bullet went astray as the Talon agent went sideways into the wall, five mala balls slamming into him at once. 

For half a second, Junkrat sat there, eyes wide and body frozen in shock. Then he inhaled sharply, his body going slack with relief.

“I’M ALIIIVVVEEE!” he cackled happily, throwing his head back and grabbing handfuls of his hair as he giggled and bounced in place. Celebration complete, Junkrat dropped his arms and glanced to the side, giggling excitedly once again at the bloody heap that was once a Talon agent. Popping his head over the edge of the walkway, grinning from ear to ear, Junkrat chirped a “Ta, mate!” in Zenyatta’s direction.

“Jamison, the objective!” Zenyatta replied, sounding entirely put out with the situation, but hey, fine, if he didn’t want to be thanked, Junkrat could live with that.

Grabbing his frag launcher, Junkrat lobbed a few rounds down into the room as he darted down the catwalk. Most of the grenades bounced around randomly, popping and cracking harmlessly, if not  menacingly, but a few bounced only once before they were caught in whatever it was Zenyatta was doing and flung into groups. Be still his beating heart, but it was beautiful. There were severed limbs lying strewn about the place, the ends charred and flayed from being blown off! If Junkrat didn’t know any better, he say he was falling in love, but that would be ridiculous.

Zenyatta was a filthy Omnic, no matter  **how** much destruction he wrought. 

Still, it was a little sexy. Just a bit. 

Like a smidge.

(It was a lot sexy. He had a total rager going, but no one needed to know.)

So caught up in the mayhem below and the Omnic causing, when Genji dropped down in front of him, Junkrat nearly had a heart attack. “Christ-!”

For a moment, they stood there, staring each other down, and Junkrat feared Genji had seen the stunt he pulled earlier, but after a few tense seconds, the cyborg silently stepped aside, and Junkrat exhaled a breath.

“Yanno, Zenyatta could probably use some help down there,” he remarked as he stepped into the server room, arching an eyebrow at Genji over his shoulder.

“I hardly expect you to care about my Master’s health,” Genji scoffed, then he disappeared over the railing in a flash of green light and angry Japanese.

“I hardly expect you to care about my Master’s health,” Junkrat repeated, his voice going nasally as he rolled his eyes. “Ooh, look at me, I’m Genji, I’m so cool and mysterious, pay attention to me, I need healing!”

With a dark mutter of “Ryuujin go fuck yourself,” Junkrat left a steel trap in the doorway, then turned to the server room, looked around, and put his hands on his hips.

“Well! I’ve got no fucking clue what I’m supposed to do with all this.”

Technically, no one on the team had any fucking clue what to do with computers, that’s why Winston thought ahead and sent them along a thumb drive that would do all the finicky hacking work on its own. All Junkrat had to do was find a place to plug it in. 

A goon stepped in his trap while Junkrat was checking the machines for a port that matched the thumb drive. He turned to deal with the bastard, but the man dropped to the ground, a few shuriken sticking out of his face. With a scoff, Junkrat turned back to the servers.

“Oop, there’s the bastard.” He shoved the drive into the slot, and with a flew clicks of the mouse and couple strokes of the keyboard, the data collection program was running. Now, ostensibly, once program finished extracting all the data it could get its greedy little hands on, a virus would be implanted that would set the servers back to factory defaults, but Junkrat didn’t really trust that. He didn’t know much about data recovery, but he knew it was a thing, and besides, he  _ really _ didn’t feel like sitting around a computer room while everyone else got to have all the fun.

So Junkrat did what he did best; he started stringing explosives around the room, making sure there was enough fire power on each server to leave nothing behind but smoking remains. They couldn’t recover anything if there wasn’t anything left to recover, after all! He hummed as he worked, occasionally pausing to throw a mine at the doorway as Talon agents tried to burst into the room.

He was about half-way done when every monitor in the room turned purple, a stylized sugar skull slowly revolving on the screens. 

“Dios mios, pobrecito, could you hack any slower?” an exasperated voice came over the speakers, the gender garbled by static and vocal distortion. “I could like, write ten different defensive programs in the time it’s taking you to get through one firewall.”

“Sorry, hacking ain’t my specialty,” Junkrat replied, not at all sorry and not at all looking up from his work. Instead, he crawled under the console and started taking apart one of the towers, unscrewing the casing to get at the wires and circuit boards inside.

“Believe me, I’ve noticed. You know taking apart a console isn’t gonna get you the information you’re after any faster, right?”

Pausing, Junkrat ducked out from beneath the console and glanced around the room, taking note of the security cameras positioned around the room. Damn, he really should have taken care of those sooner. Well, too late now, so he shrugged and slid back into place. Didn’t think Purple Skull couldn’t see what he was doing down there, anyway. 

“So, here’s the thing, my shonky stickybeak,” he started, the sugar skull quickly interrupting him to interject, “Sombra.”

“As I was saying, Stickybeak,” he asserted to an audible sigh of frustration. “It ain’t really all that important that we get that information.”

“Oh, quick question!” Junkrat added, poking his head out from beneath the console and speaking over the flat “what” from the sugar skull. “Would this happen to be the only location where this data is stored?”

“What?” The sugar skull asked again, less flat and more confused this time. “Que passa- Why would we- That is the stupidest thing- Of course we have backups, cabron, why wouldn’t we?”

Junkrat hummed thoughtfully, cupping one hand to his chin as he squinted at the far wall. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me where those backups are, would you?”

“Are you insane? Do you think I’m stupid or something? I’m not telling you  _ anything _ , pendejo, you can figure it out for yourself.”

“Mmhmm.” Nodding to himself, Junkrat shrugged then slipped back under the console. “Well, figured there was no harm in askin’. Guess I’m just gonna hafta settle for a petty victory.”

“I already told you, you’re not getting anything-”

“Oh, yeah, I know!” Junkrat chirped, cheerfully finishing up his work and climbing out from beneath the console entirely. “It’s just while you were busy havin’ a giggle over the pidily hacking dongle, I was busy setting this room to explode so-”

In the doorway to the server room, he paused, looking over his shoulder as he threw a salute at the nearest security camera. “It’s onna timer. Good luck hackin’ that.”

“What? Wait-” The sugar skull started, a note of panic tinging the distorted voice through all the static, but Junkrat was already gone. Leapt off the scaffolding and landed in a rolling heap of limbs, picking himself up just in time to see Genji help Zenyatta to his feet. The automatic monk had had just a few dents in him when Junkrat last saw him, but now, one arm hung limply at his side, sparks flickering from a severed wire in his neck.

He was leaking, too, from a great big hole in his stomach. An oil or lubricant of some kind, but it was tinged red, looking eerily like blood as it dripped down his abdominal struts and soaked into the fabric of his pants. Guilt flashed through Junkrat as he sauntered up to them, even if he wasn’t directly responsible for any of the damage. Hell, he probably wasn’t even indirectly responsible for it, as his attempt on Zenyatta’s life only resulted in superficial damage.

“Sooooo, they got a counter hacker,” he started, hands stuffed into his pockets and kicking his peg sheepishly. Neither robot nor cyborg had particularly expressive faces, but both snapped their attention towards him, and that feeling of guilt twisted just a little sharper. He ignored it. “Winston’s dongle failed, and I’ve rigged this place to explode in-”

He looked at his left wrist, which was not wearing a watch, and said, “About a minute, so we should probably get moving.”

For about a minute, Genji and Zenyatta continued to stare at him, Zenyatta clinging to Genji’s shoulder with one arm, getting oil all over everything, and Genji- Well, Genji was making some kind of weird, high pitched sound of disbelief that could be roughly transcribed as “huuehhh?”

“Well, tick tock tick tock, time’s a-wastin’!” Junkrat chirped when it looked like neither of them were going to move any time soon. He started loping back the way they came, throwing a “c’mon, c’mon!” at them over his shoulder.

Finally, they sprung into motion, Genji quickly scooping Zenyatta up into his arms and darting off to who knows where.

The dropship. He ran back to the dropship Junkrat found out after he caught up to the rest of the group. Which was right before the explosion went off, and hoo-hoo-boy, was it a doozy. All it was was one itty bitty server room, probably 5 by 7 meters at best, but Junkrat had doped it up real good to make sure there was not a single piece of electronic equipment left, and all told, it set two of the neighboring buildings on fire as well, much to Junkrat’s delight.

No one else was delighted. Everyone else, when he looked at them beaming from ear to ear, just looked tired and dismayed, which was not the reaction Junkrat was hoping for. But, well, Reinhardt called the retreat, and when they returned to the dropship, Genji was there fussing over Zenyatta even though he CLEARLY had no idea where to even begin with repairs.

“Dipstick,” Junkrat mutter, shoving Genji out of the way as Tracer made her way up to the cockpit and flopped into the pilot’s seat. Reinhardt simply found a corner to collapse in before he started extracting himself from his power armor, and Ana helpfully brought over a toolbox, as if Junkrat repairing Zenyatta was a forgone conclusion. As if. Junkrat was only making up for trying to kill the rustbucket in the first place, and then he was never doing anything nice to him again.

That was all.

At first, Genji resisted him, shoving Junkrat with a shout of “Bastard! You put him in danger and failed the mission! Why should I trust you?”

“The mission would have failed no matter which one of us was up there cuz not one of us knows computers, you drongo!” Junkrat shouted back, puffing himself up to his full height. It wouldn’t intimidate the tiny cyborg, it was true, but Junkrat felt better when he could defend himself from a superior position. “The dongle wasn’t smart enough to outhack an actual hacker, and that’s that.”

“Children!” Ana tried to cut in, to cut the fight off before it could escalate, but Genji just shouted over her, “You don’t know that! You could have given it more time! Winston wouldn’t-”

He never did get to find out what Winston wouldn’t. Ana, tired and annoyed at being ignored, had pulled out a sleep dart and jammed it forcefully into his neck.

“Normally, I would give him more time to speak, but, well…” she gestured to Zenyatta, who sat quietly, swaying slightly in his seat, his face directed vaguely downwards and one hand pressed to the hole in his side. “Someone needs to patch Zenyatta up before he shuts down.”

“Eh, we can always reboot him later,” Junkrat replied flippantly, gesturing dismissively, but took the toolbox from Ana when she held it out to him and knelt down to inspect the damage up close. He could really only perform temporary repairs without a fully stocked workshop to pull from, but he stopped the leaking and wrapped Zenyatta’s sparking wires which was enough to keep him operating.

As Junkrat stood to put the toolbox away, Zenyatta’s hand shot out, grabbing him by the bicep. His grip quickly lost strength, sliding down Junkrat’s arm until it rested at his wrist, leaving a smear of that bloody red oil down Junkrat’s skin.

“Thank you,” he said quietly, his voice coming out slow and a little garbled. His neck wasn’t that badly damaged, was it a result of crossed wiring? Or was Zenyatta somehow literally programmed to sound injured? Because he sounded injured. It was freaky. Junkrat didn’t like it. It made him feel guilty again. “I am glad you had a change of heart.”

Eugh. Now, not only did Junkrat feel guilty, he felt downright embarrassed. A change of heart? Him? Because of one rusty automaton pulling some smooth moves and wreaking destruction on an unsuspecting target? Really, it was just an argument in favor of scrapping Omnics even more, because, well, they were dangerous, right? Even the ones that didn’t look dangerous. Just look at what Zenyatta did! Just look at how many people Zenyatta killed without so much as a flutter of a conscious.

Nope, this was entirely just because Junkrat’s murder attempt failed, and now he had to cover his ass before he got murdered himself. That was it. He wasn’t even the least bit fond of the stupid mechanical cunt. Wasn’t experiencing feelings over seeing him all shot up like that, nope. Definitely not, not even a little bit.

“Just doin’ my job, mate.”

And if Junkrat sat next to Zenyatta, and if he let Zenyatta lean on him a just little bit, and if Zenyatta held his hand for the entire trip, then that was his business, anyway.


End file.
